UPDATED | Diane Day, a therapist who works at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, was sitting with the principal, other staff members and a parent in a routine meeting around 9:30 a.m. Friday when she heard gunshots.

“We were there for about five minutes chatting and we heard, ‘pop pop pop,’ ” she said. “I went under the table.”

The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, and a school psychologist leaped out of their seats and ran out of the room, Ms. Day recalled. “They didn’t think twice about confronting or seeing what was going on,” she said.

“At first we heard a bunch of kids scream, and then it was just quiet and all you could hear was the shooting,” Ms. Day said.

Ms. Hochsprung is one of the six adults and 20 children killed in the massacre at the school Friday. Media reports also said the psychologist died in the shooting.

Without a lock on the door, the school’s lead teacher pressed her body against the door to hold it shut, Ms. Day said. That teacher was shot through the door in the leg and arm.

“She was our hero,” Ms. Day said.

Afterward, the school staff walked the students to a nearby firehouse, where she borrowed someone’s phone and called her husband, who hadn’t heard about the shooting. Her high-school age son, however, had heard and was trying unsuccessfully to get a hold of his mother.